The Constraints of Fortune

​“In my grandparents’ time, the grounds of [Ferrières] were looked after by a veritable battalion of gardeners—fifty of them. A famous story was told about my grandmother who, while visiting friends one autumn day, was enraptured by the sight of a lawn strewn with fallen leaves. ‘It’s magnificent! How beautiful!’ she exclaimed, ‘but where do you get them from?’ It seems, of course, that she had never had the occasion to see a dead leaf on a lawn not even on a path. The story is too good to be true, but it is one of the family legends that continues to be told, half-smilingly, but also half-believed.”

Guy de Rothschild, The Whims of Fortune

Chateau de Ferrières

Guy de Rothschild

Image Credit: The Whims of Fortune

A copy of The Whims of Fortune signed by Guy de Rothschild is available via the Nick Harvill Libraries store.